Tellway privacy policy

1. The short version

• With an offline area downloaded and no connection, nothing at all is sent. Search, routing and spoken guidance all run on your phone.
• With a connection, some things go to our servers at api.mapmap.ai, and section 11 lists every one: what you type into search when you have no offline area, the start and end of your route, and the words of spoken instructions that are not already on your phone. Each is used to answer that request. We do not build a history of where you go.
• To use Tellway you give us an email address, once, on the sign-in screen. We use it to issue the key the app runs on and to confirm the address. It is the only personal detail Tellway asks for. Section 9 says what happens to it.
• The microphone is on only while you hold the “Hold to speak” control. What you say is turned into text on your phone. No recording is kept, no transcript is kept, and nothing you say is sent to us or to anyone else.
• Tellway keeps your last 10 searched destinations, and your Home and Work if you set them, on your phone only. They are not sent to us. You can clear the recent searches, and change or remove Home and Work, in Settings. Tellway keeps no list of your trips. Section 10 has the detail.
• New spoken sentences are recorded for us by ElevenLabs, a speech service. It receives the words of the sentence only: no key, no account and no position. Section 6 has the detail.
• We do not track you, sell your data or show you adverts. There is no analytics, no crash reporting and no advertising identifier in the app.

2. Who we are

Tellway is published by MapMap AI Ltd, trading as MapMap, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 17345596). MapMap AI Ltd is the controller of the personal data described here.

• Questions about this policy, your account or your data, and deletion requests: support@mapmap.ai
• Company and legal correspondence: hello@mapmap.ai

3. Your location

Tellway asks for “While Using the App” location access while you set it up, or when you first ask for a route. It uses your position to work out where your route starts and to guide you turn by turn. It never asks for “Always” access. If you do not allow location access, Tellway cannot work out a route, because it needs to know where you are starting from.

On your phone, your position is used to start your route, to follow your progress along it, and to show how far away your recent searches and saved places are. While a drive is running, Tellway also saves the destination, the route and how far along it you are every few seconds, so that if your phone closes the app mid-drive, the drive can carry on when you open it again. That saved drive is deleted when the drive ends, and a saved drive more than 30 minutes old is deleted rather than resumed.

What leaves your phone, and only when it has a connection:

• Working out a route without an offline area. The route's start (your current position) and your destination go to our routing engine. If you go off the route, your current position goes again so a new route can be worked out.
• Looking up which country you are in. When the speed-limit information does not say which country the road is in, for example for a route worked out on your phone, Tellway may send the start and end points of the route, rounded to about 110 metres, to find out which country they are in, so it uses the right speed-limit conventions.
• Reporting a road problem by voice. If you say “report a closed road” or “report roadworks”, your current position is sent with the report (section 7).

With no connection, none of these happens, and with an offline area downloaded, Tellway still routes and guides you.

Location while your screen is locked

Tellway is built to be used with the screen off. So while a drive is running, and only then, it keeps reading your location with the screen locked or the app in the background, so spoken guidance carries on.

• It starts when you press Start, and it stops when you arrive, press End drive, press Stop on the Android notification, or close the app. There is no other time Tellway reads your location in the background.
• On Android you will see an ongoing notification for the drive, with a Stop button. Android requires that notification for an app to keep using your location while you are not looking at it. Tellway uses the “While using the app” location permission only and does not request Android's separate background-location permission. On Android 13 and later it asks permission to show that notification.
• On iPhone the status bar shows the location indicator for the length of the drive. Tellway can also show the drive's progress as a Live Activity on your Lock Screen. That is drawn on your phone and sends nothing.
• Nothing extra is sent. Reading your location in the background changes what the app can do, not where anything goes. The requests that carry a position are the ones listed above, whether your screen is on or off.

4. Searching for a destination

• With an offline area in use, search runs against the data stored on your phone. What you type is not sent anywhere.
• Without an offline area, the search box asks MapMap's own search service at api.mapmap.ai. Tellway sends the text you have typed, no more than once every 250 milliseconds as you type. It does not send your position with a search. When you pick a result, Tellway sends what you typed and the id of the result you picked, so the search service can learn which answer was right.

Search requests are answered, not kept against your identity, and no search history is built from them on our side.

Recent searches, on your phone only. When you choose a destination from search, Tellway adds it to a list of recent searches on your phone: the place's name, its address line, its position and the time you chose it. It keeps the last 10 and drops the oldest. It is not a trip history: it does not record where you started, whether you drove there or how long it took. The list is never sent to us. You can clear it in Settings, under Places, with Clear recent searches.

5. Routes and guidance

• With an offline area in use, your route is worked out on your phone.
• Without one, it is worked out by our routing engine at api.mapmap.ai (section 3 says what is sent).
• For a route worked out by our routing engine, Tellway also sends the route's line, which is the planned route and not your live position, to fetch the posted speed limits and any reported road incidents along it, such as closures and lane restrictions. Road incidents are checked before you set off, so Tellway can tell you about one, and again if your route changes. Incident information covers National Highways' strategic road network in England only.
• The route picture. For a route worked out by our routing engine, the route preview shows a small picture of the route. To draw it, Tellway sends the route's line (simplified, starting where you are) and your destination's position, with your key, to api.mapmap.ai, which returns the image. A route worked out on your phone, for example with an offline area in use, never asks for a picture, so nothing about it is sent for one.

6. Voice guidance

Spoken directions are recorded audio clips in the MapMap voice, played from your phone, including while your screen is locked. Tellway does not use your phone's own text-to-speech.

The most common sentences, the ones with no place name in them, come built into the app. The others, including every sentence that names a road or a landmark, are fetched when you have chosen a route and your phone has a connection, with or without an offline area. The sound check while you set up the app is fetched the same way. Tellway sends the words of the sentences it does not already have, the language, the voice and your key to api.mapmap.ai, then downloads the clips and keeps them in your phone's cache. Your position is not sent with them, but the road names in them do describe the route you chose. With no connection, Tellway plays the clips it already has; an instruction it has no clip for is not spoken.

On our side, each clip is recorded once and stored under a code made from its words, and every driver who needs the same sentence gets the same file. We store each clip with the words it speaks and no key, account or position. A sentence we have never recorded before is sent on its own, with no key, account or position, to ElevenLabs, the speech service that records it for us, or to an open-source voice running on our own servers. Each request counts against your key's allowance.

7. Voice commands and the microphone

Tellway can act on a small, fixed set of spoken commands, such as “report a closed road”, “report roadworks”, “what is ahead”, “repeat that”, “mute” and “unmute”. It is not an assistant and holds no conversation: there is a fixed list of phrases, and Tellway acts on those and nothing else.

• The microphone is on only while you hold the “Hold to speak” control. Not before, not after. There is no wake word, and nothing listens while you are not holding the control.
• What you say is turned into text on your phone, by your phone's own speech recognition. On iPhone, Tellway requires the phone's on-device recognition and will not run voice commands without it. On Android it uses the phone's on-device recogniser, which needs Android 12 or later. If your phone cannot recognise speech without sending it away, voice commands are switched off rather than sent away.
• No recording and no transcript is kept. On iPhone the sound from the microphone is passed straight to the phone's recogniser, in memory, and never saved. On Android the phone's recogniser listens and hands Tellway only the words. The words are compared with the list of phrases, acted on and discarded.
• Nothing you say is sent anywhere: not the audio, not the text and not a summary.
• Two commands do send something, and it is not what you said. “Report a closed road” and “report roadworks” send a road report to api.mapmap.ai with your current position, the kind of problem and a fixed, standard note, together with your key. No contact detail is sent. We keep reports, with the key that sent them, so we can check the problem and fix the map.

Tellway asks for the microphone while you set it up, and on iPhone for speech recognition the first time you hold the control; if you did not allow the microphone then, it asks again at that point. Refusing them turns voice commands off and changes nothing else.

8. Offline areas

To work with no signal, Tellway can download an offline area: the map, routing and search data for a region you choose, from api.mapmap.ai. Listing the areas you can download, and downloading or updating one, sends your key, so we can check your download allowance, and which area it is. It does not send your location, your searches or your routes. Downloading an offline area needs a confirmed email address (section 9).

Offline areas are stored on your phone. You can remove one in Settings, under Offline area; deleting the app also removes them.

9. Your email address and your key

Tellway runs on a key issued to your phone by MapMap. To get one, you enter your email address on the sign-in screen. Tellway sends it, once, to api.mapmap.ai, with a label saying the key is for the Tellway app. We issue the key straight away and email you a link to confirm the address.

• Until you confirm the address, the key has a small allowance and lasts 72 hours. Confirming it moves the key to the free allowance and unlocks offline area downloads.
• What we hold with your email address: when the key was issued, and the IP address and user agent (the app and device details your phone sends) of that request; the key itself, stored only as a scrambled hash; and daily counts of how the key is used (which kind of request, how many, and whether it worked), which enforce its allowance. Tellway asks api.mapmap.ai, with your key, how much of this month's allowance is left, so it can tell you before it runs out.
• What we use the email address for: to issue and confirm your key, and to email you if your key comes close to or reaches its monthly allowance (at 50, 80 and 100 per cent). We do not use it for marketing and we do not sell it.
• On your phone, the email address and the key are kept in the app's own storage. Sign out, in Settings, removes them from the phone. So does deleting the app.
• The same email in two apps. If you also use MapMap Nav with the same email address, each app has its own key. Deleting your Tellway account does not delete your MapMap Nav account.

10. What stays on your phone

Tellway keeps these on your phone. None of them is sent to us.

• Your settings, such as spoken guidance on or muted, distance units, how soon the screen rests during a drive, which offline area is in use and whether downloads wait for Wi-Fi, and your answers while setting up the app (the kind of vehicle you drive and how the sound check went).
• Your email address and key (section 9), and a random number that identifies this installation of the app to itself.
• Your recent searches (section 4): the last 10 destinations you chose from search, each with its name, address line, position and the time you chose it. Clear them in Settings, under Places.
• Your Home and Work, if you set them: the name, address line and position of each. Set, change or remove them in Settings, under Places, Saved places.
• No trip list. Tellway does not keep a list of the drives you make. An earlier test version did; Tellway deletes that list when it opens.
• The drive in progress, while a drive is running (section 3).
• Voice clips that have been downloaded (section 6), in your phone's cache.
• Offline areas you have downloaded (section 8).

Tellway does not record the path you drive.

Your phone's own backup

Your phone may back itself up to Apple or Google. Those backups never come to us.

• On iPhone, none of the above is included in your iCloud Backup. If you restore a new iPhone from a backup, Tellway starts fresh and you sign in again.
• On Android, your settings, your recent searches, your Home and Work, and your email address and key are included in your phone's backup to Google, like most apps' data, and come back if you set up a new phone from that backup. If you would rather they did not, you can turn backup off for individual apps in your phone's settings (Settings, Google, Backup).

11. What leaves your phone, at a glance

A summary of sections 3 to 9. Nothing here is a new commitment.

12. What we do not collect

• No analytics and no crash reporting in the app.
• No advertising identifiers, and no tracking across other apps or websites.
• No contacts, photos or camera.
• No password and no profile beyond the email address in section 9.
• No trip history, and nothing about a drive is sent when it ends.
• No push notifications. The only notification is the Android drive notification described in section 3.

We do not build a history of where you go, and we do not sell personal data.

13. Deleting your data

In the app: open Settings and choose Delete my account. After you confirm, Tellway asks our servers to delete your Tellway account straight away, and signs you out on your phone once our servers confirm. If it cannot reach us, it tells you nothing was deleted and offers to try again or to email us instead.

If you never confirmed your email address, deleting in the app removes only the key on your phone, because an unconfirmed key does not prove the address is yours, and the app tells you so. To delete the rest, sign in again, confirm the address and delete again, or email us.

By email: write to support@mapmap.ai from the email address you gave Tellway and ask us to delete your Tellway data. We act on a request within one month.

On the web: mapmap.ai/tellway/delete-account explains the same steps.

What deleting removes:

• Your Tellway key stops working straight away, together with any earlier Tellway key issued to the same confirmed email address.
• If no other MapMap key uses your email address, we delete the email address and the IP addresses and user agents recorded when your keys were issued.
• If you also have a MapMap Nav account or a MapMap API key on the same email address, that account keeps working, so we keep the email address, IP address and user agent for it until it is deleted too.

What we keep after deletion, and why:

• The daily usage counts of a deleted key, for up to 24 months, for billing evidence and to investigate abuse, then deleted or anonymised. They carry no email address.
• Road reports you sent, with their position, kind and note, because they describe the map and not you. They carry no contact detail.
• The voice clips described in section 6, which carry no key or account.

On your phone: deleting your account clears your recent searches and your Home and Work from the phone, then signs you out. Your settings, voice clips and offline areas stay on the phone. Deleting the app removes everything Tellway stored on the phone.

14. How long we keep things

These periods are the ones in the main MapMap privacy policy, section 5, applied to Tellway.

• Your email address and your key (as a hash): while your account is active, until you delete it (section 13).
• The record of your acceptance when the key was issued (its time, IP address and user agent): for as long as that agreement could be relevant. When you delete in the app and no other MapMap key uses your email address, the IP address and user agent are erased and only the time is kept.
• Daily usage counts for a key: while the key is active, and up to 24 months after it is revoked, then deleted or anonymised.
• The de-identified demand log carries no key, account or IP address and cannot be linked to you.

15. Your rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to access the personal data we hold about you, to have it corrected or erased, to restrict or object to how we use it, and to receive it in a portable form. Email support@mapmap.ai and we will act on a verified request within one month. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).

We rely on these lawful bases: performance of a contract, to run the app and the key you signed up for; and our legitimate interests, to keep the service secure and free of abuse.

16. Who else handles your data

We use a small number of service providers, each acting on our instructions:

• Hetzner: the servers our API runs on, in the European Union.
• Resend, our transactional email provider: sends the confirmation email and allowance emails.
• ElevenLabs: records new spoken sentences (section 6). It receives the words of a sentence only.

The full list, with what each can see and where it processes, is at mapmap.ai/legal/subprocessors.

17. Children

Tellway is a navigation app for drivers and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children.

18. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we will update the date at the top of this page and, for any material change, say so in the app's release notes.

19. Contact

Tellway is published by MapMap AI Ltd, registered in England and Wales (company 17345596), trading as MapMap.

• Questions about this policy, your account or your data: support@mapmap.ai
• Company and legal correspondence: hello@mapmap.ai